From R.D. Laing's Knots. Something along the lines of because the person can't respect themselves, they can't respect anyone else who treats them with respect....

Anyone who's unhappy in this society I imagine may in some way not respect themselves... Eventually anyway, because they will reach the point where as opposed to believing it's others fault, that it's the inherent insanity of how the whole society is structured, they will start blaming themselves at least to some extent. Eventually seeing the fault as being their own, and thus feeling themselves to be failures. And then quickly on to not respecting themselves. And thus anyone who rants and raves about all the negative aspects of this society is likely to end up looking like a massive hypocrite. In that if you reach out to them, give them something other than more of the massive indifference which is the norm, they most likely won't be able to give anything at all in return.

Because you respect them and they don't respect themselves and thus they don't respect you... And because to actually break free of such social norms takes strength. And I don't know really. Truthfully it's beyond me. It's not a way I'd act.

More truthfully: In face to face interactions no one really dares to be so honest about the depth of the negative feelings they have, with respect to what this world is doing to them. A ton take prozac, etc. Which strongly indicates their negative feelings run deep. But in face to face such things certainly remain hidden. Short of it being someone you're having sex with.

On the internet a very few here and there will attempt more honesty about such negative feelings.

But, this honesty I guess is more than made up for by all that is lost in this medium. So much that would otherwise be imparted to get the whole picture is lost. And without that which is lost, it is perhaps hopeless and futile to even attempt to understand what in the world really is going on with any individual person.

Someone said the internet isn't real. Well, in face to face interactions no one is real either. The internet was hopefully a way to uncover the parts hidden in the endless banal and pointless face to face interactions where people are doing nothing more than having ritualistic conversations the goals of which are highly crude. Not much more than sniffing each other's ass. The smile to say I'm not a threat, etc.

In face to face interactions you get 10% of the truth. On the internet the hope is that some part of the other 90% will peek through.

That's been my hope anyway.

And it certainly has peeked through at times.

And what has mostly peeked through is incredibly ugly.

But still what we have in online interactions amounts to about 3% of the truth as opposed to 10% generally speaking in face to face where you still can get an idea about all that the person is withholding...

Maybe some of that 3% is different from what is received in a face to face. (Of course such percentages varying widely.) But more and more, this isn't even the case. And less and less is there any reason to bother with the internet. And more and more it seems that the main thing being revealed is that some people are so full of fear that they're afraid to interact by more traditional means...

I'm not trying to call anyone out. This is just how it seems based on a decade of experience. Because of this, among other reasons, I'm reticent to be online. Even this bit of typing, I would have much prefered to be reading a book with the little bit of time I have before work.

Now I've only got 30 minutes to read. And I still have to go make my daily attempt at a one arm chinup, etc.